A new report that I have co-authored with James Golby and Kyle Dropp was released yesterday by the Center for a New American Security. The study, titled Military Campaigns: Veterans’ Endorsements and Presidential Elections, can be found here. The New York Times also reportson the study.

We tested whether telling voters that “most members of the military and veterans” support one candidate or the other had an impact on voter’s preferences for President Obama or Governor Romney. We found that in the aggregate, such endorsements did not seem to move vote choice by a statistically significant amount, but that they did have a statistically significant effect on voters who claimed to be independents and especially on independents who claimed not to follow foreign policy very closely.

President Obama received a statistically significant bump in support from those voters who were told of an endorsement, whereas Governor Romney did not. We believe that is because a military/veteran endorsement of Obama would be surprising, given public perceptions of the military as a conservative organization and the historical advantage Republicans have had on national security.

We go on to argue, however, that such endorsements are not good for civil-military relations because they involve the military in partisan politics. Of course, retired military may exercise their first amendment rights just as any other citizen could. But we argue: